Back on the grind!

The past week I have been back to my full time schedule of work. 4 tens, mon-thurs. It has allowed me to: A. Become rich beyond my wildest imaginations of wealth! B. Struggle to stay awake past 9:30pm. C. Struggle to get up at 6:30am. D. Maintain a stellar training regiment at the local gym! E. Start setting routes and boulder problems.

It has officially been over a week and a half since I last touched real rock and I have to say that I am extremely rock starved! In fact, I have even been fondling small rocks that I stole from the banks of the Wenatchee just to get my fix! I hope, pray, dream, and even believe that I will one day be able to get back to Little si before the 2010 year is over with, but, who knows? The last second hand report I heard was that World Wall was soaking wet, sheesh. But the outdoor rope climbing adventures of Micah are looking up. I may be able to get out to Vantage this weekend, if only for one day. It’s hard to determine exactly what to spend that precious amount of time doing/projecting? Do I go for volume, or step it up and try out the awesome looking .12c at the Sanctuary? Guess it depends on who my climbing partners are.

In any event the recent moratorium on dry rock has led me into the dusty, chalk filled, plastic world of the gym. More importantly I have entered this world and begun to look at it through the lens of a route setter. It has been far too long since I have wielded a wrench so reuniting with my route setting roots this past weekend was a blast. The last project we tackled was stripping and setting new routes in the cave area of the Warehouse. A very good time was had as Jimmy, Laura, and I stripped off tape and holds and started creating a new world. It’s always inspiring to have a blank canvass to work with and a spectrum of grades to choose from. When I was consistently setting at the Warehouse (before the regular climbing season began) I was mainly focused on setting routes; due in large part to a heinous pulley injury I suffered in late December early January. However, this latest installment of route setting for me was all boulder problems and I had a great time setting them. I think I have an even better time naming problems, but setting problems from a movement driven vision is like trying to create great works of art. Some people can just throw holds on the wall and voila! You’ve got a 3 star classic for sure, but others (me) take a little longer. I like to start by creating the skeleton of a route or a problem and then trying the moves in my head. Once I have a seemingly cohesive line, I start to try it for real and de-bug all of the awkward or reachy sequences as they come up. This is also the time period when you can adjust for the grade. Remove a jug and replace it with a crimp, remove a terrible sloper and replace it with a jug, you know the drill.

When the dust settled and the problems were all named, I had set three problems in all: a V.4, a V.6, and V.7/8. I’m most proud of the V.6, as one dimensional as it may seem. A cool roof problem on incut crimps and finger jugs with drop knees, body tension, and great lock off’s. I’ve only completed about 2/3’s of the moves but I already know it will make a really good circuit problem, might just need a bit more tweaking near the end.

I’ve also been really driven to stick to a regimented training schedule. So far I’ve completed three days of this particular circuit which is a combination of a work out that I did with Lisa before she left for college and bits and pieces of what has worked for me in the past and what other’s have suggested; as well as whatever I can glean out of E. Horsts latest training guide. On a typical training day the only climbing I allow myself to do is warming up-lap the gym twice (around 300 moves) and practice shaking out and resting during this time; cave laps-which consist of running laps on the cave route which is a V.2/3 boulder problem that starts at the bottom of the cave and can be linked into the traverse and back into itself, so it makes for a good power circuit (I try to at least do 6 laps and link it as many times as possible, so far I’ve only been able to do 2.5 laps on link) ; then it’s on to the meat of the training day, campus board w/feet-the ‘with feet’ part is because I’m still recovering from a finger injury, basically the campus board circuit I go through consists of 5 stages, 1) up and downs using every rung and going up and down until failure (I do this with two of the three levels of rungs 4 times). 2) skipping rungs and going up and down until failure (on two of the three levels of rungs 3 times), 3) skipping one rung and then skipping two rungs, switching arms each time until failure, then mixing it up and skipping two rungs and then one rung and going till failure (4 times), 4) rung dyno, starting with a rung at a comfortable level of height and dynoing two rungs up to the next rung with both hands and then dropping back to the starting rung, repeating until failure (3times), 5) campus board warm down, up and downs skipping every other rung, on all levels of rungs until failure. A very important part of this work out is in between sets you have to do 50 crunches, so basically when you are not on the campus board you should be doing crunches, I think in total it comes to 750 crunches. After this I go in to weighted dead hangs, I use a weight belt that weighs 12 pounds and I either use a fingerboard and hang for 5+ seconds on pockets, crimpers, and slopers, or I find holds around the gym to hang from that are challenging enough to provide a good pump. Each hang is 5+ seconds and I hang from each set of holds three times. Last but not least is the warm down, for this particular circuit I have three stations, push up rungs, bicep curl bar (40 pounds), and a round tube with grip tape on it to do dead hangs from. I start by doing 20 push-ups, go into 20 second dead hangs, and then 30 bicep curls, this constitutes one set and I do 3 -4 sets depending on how gassed I am by this time, trying to minimize rests between sets. The entire work out has taken me 2 and a half hours. Between each circuit within the entire circuit I take at least 10-15 minute rests, which are much needed, so overall the total resting time is 35-40 minutes, so overall you should be working hard for almost two hours!

I still have a lot to learn about training techniques and I’m very eager to start learning the ‘ring work outs’ that Jimmy has been doing lately. On the non-training days I just climb. I try to do 4X4’s where I repeat problems 4 times or do pyramids where I do a V.2, V.3, V.4, V.4 set and then try to link all the problems into each other without getting off the wall and down-climbing on any hold. Plus I have become a huge fan of down climbing routes for endurance/power endurance.

On my rest days I have been running 3-4 miles, with a goal of running at least 15 miles a week. This was a lot easier to maintain when I was working part time, believe me!

I’ve never really had an actual ‘training’ regiment before, so I hope I can stick to this and be as consistent about doing the work outs as possible (without getting injured). My main motives for undertaking a workout program of this kind is to get stronger, become a fitter individual, increase the level of difficulty at which I climb (and subsequently break free of the plateau I find myself in), become a more confident climber, and last but not least PREVENT INJURIES!

I hope this post has at the very least been interesting and if anyone who is reading this has any tips or pointers about training for climbing and what they do please feel free to share. The 4^th annual South Sound Pull Down is right around the corner and I hope that this training pays off and I will finally be able to beat Dom this year! Mwahahaha!